LR the Liberal Redneck here, coming to you from a country with the largest prison population in the world, and that includes Russia and China. Of the 2.5M prisoners currently incarcerated, only 22% committed violent crimes. The remaining 2M are serving time for non-violent crimes, primarily drug related, that carry mandatory sentences. Even more outrageous than our huge prison population is the cost involved in keeping them jailed. We, the taxpayers, are currently spending in excess of 200B a year to house, feed, clothe and provide medical treatment to inmates at an average annual cost of 31K per prisoner. Ironically, our average expense per year for educating our children is a miserly 13K per student.

Tricky Dick Nixon’s plan to curtail black voting, dubbed “The War on Drugs” by the media, was an abject failure from the get go regarding drug trafficking. However it did create our enormous prison population with non-violent offenders and took a lot of people Nixon considered “undesirables” off the voting rolls. Unfortunately the white supremacist currently occupying the AG’s office in Washington wants to do away with President Obama’s efforts to ease the grossly unfair situation created by “The War on Drugs” via mandatory minimum sentencing, and bring it back on board by demanding U.S. prosecutors seek maximum sentencing in all their cases.

This is just one more classic example of pure Republican greed. President Obama canceled the federal government’s contracts with “for profit” prisons because of extremely poor performance ratings. AG Sessions immediately contracted for more “for profit” prisons to house the expanded prison population he plans to create with his new attack. “For profit” prisons not only get paid for housing inmates, they hire them out as forced labor, pay them nothing and keep all the profits from their work. The more inmates, the more money. No wonder they contributed so much money to Cheeto’s campaign and AG Sessions is making sure they get paid to play!

The 2018 mid term elections need to be a total Republican blood bath. We cannot afford to let their unbridled avarice bring down our nation.

LR the Liberal Redneck here, coming to you from a country whose citizens are fed up with our ridiculous healthcare system that is unlike the systems employed by every other industrialized nation in the world. Instead of providing universal healthcare that is the same for everyone, we have a class system for our healthcare that reflects our economic system, which has placed the vast majority of our nation’s wealth in the hands of a very small group of individuals. Anyone who is not in that very small group has to deal with the only healthcare system in the industrialized world that can cause financial ruin if you are faced with a catastrophic illness.

The other 25 industrialized nations of the world use the taxes collected from their citizens to ensure access to affordable healthcare for everyone. The United States does not. The leaders of our nation have saddled us with a healthcare system that allows insurance companies to determine what illnesses will be covered and what the cost of that coverage will be. This creates a moral conundrum that puts the desire for profit ahead of the desire to provide the highest level of care to our citizens.

The Resistance has already demonstrated the unacceptability of the GOP’s newest version of “save the rich and screw the poor” healthcare. We have the infrastructure in place to make the transition to universal healthcare as painless as possible. Expanding and modifying Medicare to accommodate all our citizens is logical, fair, humane, cost effective and very doable.

Since Medicare only covers 80% of medical expenses, insurance companies would still be needed to provide policies that cover the remaining 20%. They would no longer have the right to decide what would be covered and they would have to drastically cut administration costs in order to be competitive, but they would also have a captive market of over 300M.

This is where we the people must take a stand and force our government to do the right thing or face the consequences.

LR the Liberal Redneck here, coming to you from a country that is afraid. Very, very afraid. While fear is not usually a good thing, it is capable of providing some startling results. That is certainly the case with the fear currently pervading our country.

It has awakened a sleeping giant in the form of The Resistance. Americans from all walks of life, from every religious group, from every political party, from every ethnic group, from every geographic section of the country have used their common fear to unite and declare, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this shit anymore!”

The Resistance was started primarily by women who were outraged that the man who was crushed in the popular vote still managed to get into the White House. Their numbers have swelled because his subsequent actions have scared even those who originally supported him, and all that fear has created a level of activism rarely witnessed in the history of our nation.

Another motivation instrumental in fueling the passion of The Resistance is disgust. Disgust at the artificial class system created by the phenomenon known as, Income Inequality. It is outrageous that a small handful of individuals have the bulk of our nation’s wealth while so many are hungry, homeless and sick. Disgust that a nation of immigrants has a government at war with the same kind of people that created our nation.

The Resistance is also fueled by a common embarrassment that our country is being represented to the world in the form of an orange turd that is either mentally challenged or just a total fucking idiot who sold his soul to the Russians for fame and glory.

Fear, Disgust and Embarrassment have created a juggernaut that will no longer tolerate the status quo. Things are going to change because the people have had enough. They are seizing control and their demands will be met, one way or another!

LR the Liberal Redneck here, coming to you from a country that simply cannot depend on our elected officials in Washington to do the right thing.

We are faced with a situation where a foreign government commandeered our election process and manipulated it with their best interests in mind and our so-called “leaders” are doing their dead level best to make it disappear because it put their party in control.

Russiagate makes Watergate look like a Homecoming prank and illegitimate president Cheeto has yet to be impeached by the Republican controlled congress. Their collusion must also be addressed.

This travesty must become a mandate for “The Resistance!” We have to DEMAND that an independent prosecutor be appointed to get to the bottom of this clearly treasonous scandal.

We have seen first hand how incredibly successful a grass roots campaign can be with the salvation of the ACA. Politicians have only one cardinal rule: “Keep Getting Elected!” When their constituents get in their faces at the town hall meetings and flood their offices with phone calls, faxes, emails and letters they pay attention because they know that failure to keep them happy will result in a violation of their cardinal rule.

If congress fails to act in a TIMELY manner we must move to force their acquiescence. A 10,000,000 Voter March on Washington D.C. with a sit down in the halls of the government that we the people own, would send a powerful message about the depths of our displeasure with their actions.

Our current government is an international embarrassment. Our allies are shocked and appalled. Our enemies are laughing their asses off. The world can’t believe that we know the Russians tainted our election and we haven’t done shit to correct it. Cheeto and his band of billionaires and billionaire wannabes must face the consequences of treason if we are ever to regain our status as leaders of the Free World!

LR the Liberal Redneck here, coming to you from a world that, thanks to president Cheeto, is actually teetering on the verge of global thermo nuclear war.

The implications of WWlll in an era where Russia, China, Pakistan, India, the UK, France, Israel and the United States have nuclear arsenals and several other nations including North Korea are extremely close, does not bode well for the survival of our planet.

Everyone has seen some of the post apocalyptic movies that depict a dark and gloomy world in the aftermath of nuclear war. The main flaw they all have in common is survivors. In a real post apocalyptic world there will be no survivors. Life as we know it will cease to exist. Our planet will be dead and likely to remain so for millions of years.

When the only time nuclear weapons were used in war by the United States against the Empire of Japan, the world looked at the horribly devastating results and decided that further use of such weapons simply could not be justified, and by a mutual agreement called the Non Proliferation Treaty, 190 nations agreed that countries with nuclear arsenal would move towards disarmament, countries without nuclear arsenals would not acquire them and all nations could participate in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

LR the Liberal Redneck here, coming to you from a country that is on the verge of confirming a major historical prophesy. Namely that democracies seldom last beyond 200 years and are followed by a dictatorship and then a monarchy.

The recent acceleration of the decline of the U.S. democracy has been nothing short of spectacular. It started when we allowed a foreign power to determine the outcome of our presidential election. Our citizens were denied their Constitutional right to express their political preferences. This kind of intrusion is not allowed in a democracy.

A true democracy provides for restraints on the executive branch. The U.S. Senate was designed with the same number of representatives from each state to give a true voice to the minority opinion. The U. S. Senate eliminated that restraint by changing the rules to confirm an illegitimate Supreme Court justice. Because war is such a serious matter, the U.S. Constitution says it is solely the right of our congress to make such a declaration. When our “so called” president ignored the Constitution and launched a military attack against a foreign country without even telling congress until after the fact, they applauded his initiative instead of challenging his usurping their autority. The removal of executive restraints does not happen in a democracy.

Lastly a true democracy provides a guarantee of civil liberties, or personal freedoms, that the government cannot abridge either by law or judicial interpretation without due process. Civil liberties include freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, equal treatment under the law, the right to life, and the right to own property. It is laughable to say that those liberties exist today in the United States of America. The Dakota pipeline incident has seen Native Americans lose every single one of those liberties all by itself. Unfortunately that is not an isolated incident and such things do not happen in a democracy.

Maybe we the people still have time to take back our dysfunctional government and return it once again to a true democracy instead of allowing it to digress into a dictatorship and then a monarchy. That’s not going to happen by sitting on our asses and watching the parade go by.

LR the Liberal Redneck here, coming to you from a country that failed to heed President Dwight Eisenhower’s warning about the danger of the growth of the “military industrial complex” and instead, allowed that military industrial complex to go bat shit crazy.

Bet you did not know that the Pentagon is one of the largest landowners in the world with over 30,000,000 acres. There are 6,000 military bases and/or facilities, including warehouses, in the U.S. and 737 military bases in foreign countries. Russia has 20 military bases in foreign countries, mostly former members of the Soviet Republic. China has one military base in a foreign country.

The U. S. military budget, already higher than the next nine military budgets combined, is currently at $824.1 billion dollars and President Cheeto wants to increase it by another $54 billion dollars. Did I mention bat shit crazy?

This situation has to be addressed. Our priorities as a nation have to change. We do not need this level of military protection to keep our citizens safe. It is our tax money that is paying for this while millions of our citizens are sick, homeless and hungry. Our first responsibility is to our own citizens and not the military industrial complex.

We know what has to be done and how to do it and the exciting new level of activism that has emerged in the post election turmoil even makes it possible. We have to elect government representatives that want the same things we want.

By closing the majority of foreign bases and selling off that valuable real estate plus slashing the military budget in half, we would have the necessary funds to fix our crumbling infrastructure, provide a top flight public education system for our children, house and feed the hungry and homeless and provide universal healthcare for all citizens without any significant loss in the protection of our nation. It is imperative that the United States of America finally embraces the 21st century.

LR the Liberal Redneck here, coming to you from a country where President Cheeto and his minions are doing their dead level best to erase the cultural history of our nation in order to once again make it the private domain of the white man.

They are in a panic because the white population is decreasing in our country and the other ethnic groups are growing. They are running out of time and this panic has manifested itself in the “Muslim Ban”, the “ICE” raids and Trumpcare, which was clearly designed to decrease the surplus population of poor people.

There are two basic types of racists in Cheeto’s administration, religious and ethnic. The religious racists are represented by VP Mike Pence who thinks the Constitution should be replaced with the white man’s Christian Bible and Education Secretary Becky DeVos who thinks our schools should be devoted to the study of that same Bible and nothing else. Freedom of religion just does not work for these people.

The ethnic racists have broader representation in Cheeto’s administration. Leading their cause is special advisor Steve Bannon who believes the country would be better if blacks could not vote, AG Jefferson Beauregard Sessions who was denied a Federal Judgeship because he was a racist, Congressman Steve King R-Iowa who wants to sterilize non whites to slow down their approaching majority, and HUD Secretary Ben Carson who described his African ancestors who arrived in chains as immigrants looking for a better life. Equality for all just does not work for these people.

Cheeto and his minions have not even tried to conceal their intentions. They are blatantly pursuing a different kind of America where Money and White Christian Men tell the rest of us to get to the back of the bus.

We will have one chance to put the brakes on Cheeto’s runaway train of destruction. Every Republican Congressman and 8 Republican Senators will face elections in 2018. Democrats have to reclaim both Houses of Congress in this historically important election if our country has a chance of surviving as a democracy. It really is that important!

LR the Liberal Redneck here, coming to you from a country where a significant portion of the population is getting ready to let Republican lawmakers know exactly how they feel about their plan to gut the other two remaining social programs created by Democrats, Medicare and Social Security. They just released their plan to replace the ACA with a program that guarantees insurance company CEO’s a significant increase in their personal incomes. While the ACA is universally popular with our citizens, as long as you don’t call it Obamacare, it does have a high degree of vulnerability because of the government subsidies for low-income citizens.

Medicare has a somewhat lesser degree of vulnerability since only half of it’s funding comes from the government and the other half is funded by the payroll tax we pay our entire working life and the premiums paid by Medicare recipients, but the GOP wants to make it a voucher program so old people can buy their own policies. After all Insurance Companies want a lot of old people on their rolls…NOT!

Ever since St. Ronnie of Reagan looked at the huge cash reserves accumulated by the Social Security program, totally funded by U.S. workers, and borrowed from those reserves to give the rich another of the endless tax breaks Republicans are so fond of bestowing on their contributors, they have been salivating to get their greedy little hands on the rest of it. To hear them tell it, our country would be saved if only we could turn Social Security over to their buddies on Wall Street

The vast majority of seniors depend heavily on their Social Security and Medicare benefits and since we no longer participate at the same level as before in the workforce, we have the time to make sure Republicans know that their great plan to save the country is pure bullshit in the most effective way possible, by voting! Our numbers are currently at 47 million and that is more than enough “White Hair Power” to really drain the swamp in Washington!

LR the Liberal Redneck here, coming to you from a country where President Cheeto read a well written (probably by Steve Bannon) speech off the teleprompter to Congress without going off script and rambling in fractured statements, and despite the fact that as usual it was filled with his normal amount of lies, all of a sudden he is being lauded as “Presidential” by his minions.

They conveniently overlooked the fact that there was no mention of tax returns or the Russian connection. Until there is a resolution of these two monumental obstacles there is no way on earth for him to remotely be considered “Presidential”.

Particularly disgusting was his manipulation of the grieving widow of the Navy Seal killed in the disastrous Yemen raid that he unwisely sanctioned over dinner and then blamed everyone but himself when it failed miserably. He tries to portray himself as a champion of the military when his actions demonstrate something entirely different.

His call for a huge increase in our military budget has absolutely no provisions for veterans or active service members and their families, and in fact he has put the spouses of some active servicemen at risk of being deported in his ill advised ICE roundup. That increase is strictly designed to be a bonanza to the arms makers and you can be sure that Cheeto will be getting a large piece of that action on the back end and under the table. That’s how he rolls!

You can put lipstick on a pig and call it “Presidential” but the first time it rains the lipstick washes off and you still have a pig. Cheeto is blatantly using the office of president to make money for himself in spite of it being a direct violation of the Constitution. He is daily found to be wanting and no amount of lipstick will ever change that.